When Kendra Baker arrived as a freshman at UC Santa Cruz, her love was science and her major was chemistry. She'd never thought much about food, and even less about agriculture, and certainly never considered cooking as a career.

But one day Baker strolled into the UCSC Farm & Alan Chadwick Garden, a 30-acre organic research and training program, and she felt a jolt of inspiration.

"It was breathtaking," she recalled. "You could feel the energy, the buzz, in this ecosystem they had created. The farm opened my eyes to the impact that farming can have on health and the environment, and to the great beauty that comes out of producing organic food."

The switch from hard science to culinary arts was gradual. Baker changed her undergraduate focus from chemistry to language studies, focusing on Spanish and Italian, and spent a semester in Italy. She started serving in local restaurants and, after graduation, took her first cooking job under Jim Denevan at Gabriella Cafe, one of the first Santa Cruz restaurants to buy directly from local farmers.

"Working at Gabriella was inspiring, they were so true to local sourcing, they never wavered," Baker said. "That's not easy to do when you're constantly thinking of the bottom line. From Gabriella on, this career path blossomed for me, and I decided to go to culinary school."

Off to France

That required leaving Santa Cruz, and Baker and her boyfriend (now husband) Nick Gallant headed east - he to Berklee College of Music in Boston, she to Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island. She fell in love with pastry while doing an apprenticeship at a Michelin-starred patisserie, Le Musee de l'Arte du Sucre, in Cordes-sur-Ciel, near Toulouse, France.

"It's where science and chemistry intersect in the kitchen," Baker said. "Everything fell into place for me."

The chef in charge of the patisserie was an earnest teacher who defied the stereotype of a sharp-tongued French chef.

"It was 'Karate Kid'-esque," Baker laughed. "He would put me in front of a pot of butter and say, 'Close your eyes and listen!' I was supposed to hear and smell when the butter got brown, when it was time to pull the pan off the flame."

Baker worked her way back west with a job as pastry assistant at No. 9 Park in Boston, followed by two years as opening pastry chef at Bar Tartine in San Francisco, then a posting as executive pastry chef at Manresa in Los Gatos, another Michelin-rated restaurant.

David Kinch, Manresa chef/owner, is not surprised by Baker's rapid rise in the restaurant business.

"Kendra is obsessive, but so are a lot of successful people," Kinch said. "She's also smart, hardworking and ambitious. It's a great combination."

Getting her own place

Baker's next step was opening her own restaurant, and she wanted to do it in Santa Cruz, where small organic farms produce a dazzling variety of ingredients year-round.

"Santa Cruz has enough space for some life/work balance, and it's a better place to grow a family. And the farming and food network is really special. The farms are right here. You can really connect with the people growing your food."

Baker teamed up with Zachary Davis, a longtime friend who was completing a Green MBA program at Dominican University. They created a detailed 70-page business plan for a restaurant/ice cream shop, but scaled the project back to a more affordable venture they named the Penny Ice Creamery.

As it turned out, all that detail came in handy. The Penny was wildly popular from the day it opened in 2010, and within six months the business had reached a level of sales the partners had expected would take three years to achieve.

"When you're not sleeping much, it's pretty nice to have a plan to tell you how to handle situations," Davis said. "We retrieved the information stored in that business plan a lot faster than we thought we would."

Baker and Davis were working 100-hour weeks at their new venture, in addition to being new parents. Baker's son, Nolan, and Davis' son, Jack, were born two weeks apart, shortly before the Penny opened. But when friends approached the pair about starting a beachfront cafe near the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, they couldn't resist. The Picnic Basket opened in 2011 to rave reviews.

Aiming even higher

Now they've added a third business to the mix. Last month Baker and Davis opened Assembly, their most ambitious venture yet, a full-service restaurant located in the heart of Santa Cruz's downtown (see story, below). Davis works the floor and manages the finances, while Baker and executive chef Carlo Espinas perform creative magic in the kitchen.

With its communal tables and local, seasonal food, Assembly reflects the vision of community-based food and farming that Baker glimpsed years ago at the UCSC farm and garden.

"Between then and now, the food scene has really blossomed in Santa Cruz," she said. "People have realized that we don't just grow food here, we can turn it into fantastic cuisine. There's a passion for our community's story, and people are really responding to it."